1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to an audio font output device, a font data base, and a language input front end processor, and particularly, to an audio font output device, a font data base, and a language input front end processor enabling output of both characters and an audio signal.
2. Description of the Related Art
When using a computer or other information processing device to display characters, the characters input by an input device, which converts the input characters into character codes, are displayed on a display. A user visually recognizes the input characters and understands the characters, words, or text.
Similarly, when displaying a file sent through a network on a display, the user visually recognizes the displayed characters in the file so as to understand the text in the file.
This is the usual way to understand displayed character information.
For example, Japanese Translation of International Patent Application WO1997/037344 (hereinafter, referred to as “reference 1”) discloses a technique to read characters in a file, namely, to transform the characters in the file into voice so as to reduce the time to grasp the meaning of the text. Reference 1 discloses a text-voice converting device which prevents the generation of specific words, and converts text into audio signals.
Instead of only reading text, for example, Japanese Laid Open Patent Application No. 2003-150507 (hereinafter, referred to as “reference 2”) discloses a technique that produces sounds specific to predetermined symbols when the predetermined symbols are input. In the technique of reference 2, when pictorial symbols are included in a file, while reading the characters in the file, the sounds are produced corresponding to the pictorial symbols in the file.
In addition, many other techniques have been put into practical use to produce voice based on the display of characters. For example, an input device such as a touch panel, which is operated by a weak key stroke, can sound each time a key is stroked.
However, in the technique of reference 1, which reads characters, that is, converts the characters into voice, sometimes it is difficult to grasp the meaning of the text if the user does not listen to the entire text. For example, if a sentence is a quite long, sometimes it is sufficient to just understand certain points (for example, the abstract) of the sentence. Further, when reading text with a device, if pauses are not appropriate between words or phrases, the user feels uncomfortable with the voice sound produced by reading the text. In this case, it is not so helpful to read the text while inputting the characters.
In the technique of reference 2, which produces sounds specific to pictorial symbols, sometimes the pictorial symbols have nothing to do with the meaning of the text; hence, the produced sound hinders understanding of the text. Further, when appropriate sounds are prepared in connection with the contents of the pictorial symbols in the text, due to the large number of types of sounds, the capacity of the memory for storing the sound data increases, and this increases the time to extract the appropriate sounds and increases the cost of the device. Further, when too many pictorial symbols and specific sounds are used, it may become difficult for the user to remember the corresponding relationships between the pictorial symbols and the specific sounds, and this makes the user feel inconvenienced.
In the technique of producing a sound each time a key is stroked, since the sound has nothing to do with the input characters or text, the sound cannot help the user to grasp the content of the input text.